Why I say that is because of a concept borrowed from the financial industry called asset amplification. In the context of financial markets, asset amplification describes how changes of wealth in financial markets causes amplification because of follow-on consequences. (Thanks to the Journal of Financial Economics article by Wei Xiong explaining how this works.) Similarly, the power of copy can be amplified if it is placed into a robust technology framework. Once copy is placed inside of a framework, it becomes the content of that framework. Like coffee is the “content” of a cup, copy is the content within a technology framework. And like a super-hero with the appropriate gear, copy, with the appropriate framework, gets super-powers, too.

The super-power of content is the potential for follow-on consequences of copy because of the underlying technopower is what turns copy into content. Thinking back a few years, communications coordinators who organized events would type out the event details: event name, start and time, place, cost, and so on, and then spend hours copying and pasting the event into sites that would allow them to paste it into a provided text box or, even more time-consuming, complete a set of form fields that the coordinators had to fill out individually. Today, we use content feeds which allow events to be amplified with no manual intervention. This is done through the technopower of the underlying technology framework.

As we get away from brochureware to robust interactivity, the need for rich semantic content grows. Again, copy, multiplied by technopower, makes content which can be processed by other systems. The event example was a simple one, but there are increasing levels of complexity, from “simple” publishing to the kind of interactivity and outputs that allow for successive complex transformations of content. We are all familiar with how content gets syndicated, but what may be a surprise is how much content is manipulated and transformed within a system. Each transformation provides the potential for additional amplification, and eventually provides a much richer user experience for the content consumer.

In the end, content may be nothing without copy; however, in a post-paper world, copy is nothing without content.

Previous post: Turning Copy into Content

Let’s start with the lowly Word document. How many of you use stylesheets to write your copy? That is, use it properly. Be honest;  nobody is watching you. What I’m talking about is about applying the right tags to the appropriate headings and subheadings, applying appropriate tags for the various list types,  and so on. Why is this important? Once you save this document as a PDF, this is what allows your generated Table of Contents – you did know that you can auto-generate all of your tables of authority and references, right? – to be hot-linked to the appropriate heading. It’s part of what makes your document meet accessiblility standards. Oh, and those same qualities make documents mobile-friendly, as well.  And do you add the metadata to the properties screen, and keywords that would help with internal search? If you do, you’re in the miniscule minority that does, because you understand how using the technical side of Word can be of benefit down the road.

Moving ahead to the example we used in the persuasive genre of copy. News releases are a type of content that organizations want to share. For more years than necessary, communications coordinators have cut-and-pasted news releases into various partner and distribution service sites. However, if the copy is created in a semantically structured format – that is,  with systemic attention to detail so that  other systems can understand and programmatically process the content – then it’s possible to leverage the content exponentially to get better value from it. For this example, I’m not debating whether the news release genre is dead, or what should go into a news release. This is about how to get the best use whatever content you do create. You do this with technology, which will be discussed in the next post.

Previous post: Copy is not content

Next post: Defining content in the age of technology

All Copy All the Time

Copy is all that stuff that we all learned to write in school. Well, actually, no it’s not. What our kindly grade school teacher imparted gave us a foundation for writing, but few of us went on to learn the skills needed to be a professional writer. And to create copy, you need to understand a number of basic elements.

Understanding how to write copy is to understand the key characteristics of major genres and their subgenres. Let’s see how much of this you learned in school.  There are two basic genres used in business:

Persuasive

Persuasive copy is that which convinces you to do a certain thing or think in a certain way. That’s why it’s called persuasive copy. The most common characteristic is the call to action. Any persuasive copy has some built-in message meant to convert a “looker” into a “buyer”. It can be the equivalent of “buy now” text, or a link to click, or an invitation to register for a free account or to receive a white paper or to contact your local politician. The writers who create this type of copy know what the rhythm is for this type of copy. They how much copy readers generally tolerate, and will ensure that they get to the call to action before they lose interest. When presented with an unfocused block of writing, their first question will be “what is the call to action here?” closely followed by “and how do you see the conversion happening?”

Within the larger genre are many subgenres. Among them is the news release. While not the most exciting of genres, I’m going to use it here because it’s been around for a long while, and we’ve all seen them, and may have even written them. Later on, I’ll use this to illustrate the differences between copy and content.

The news release genre is well-defined. It begins with an announcement line, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ,  and is followed by a release date and location. The writing follows the “pyramid” style, where the most important content is contained in the first sentence and the boilerplate – the description of the company and contact information – is at the end. In the middle section is the elaboration of the succinct description in the introduction, and includes the call to action. The call to action is subtle; the news release reports on some upcoming event, product release, or initiative with information on where to buy tickets, when the product will become available, or how to get involved.   It’s all about the editorial, leading to  a  conversion  of some sort.  In the public sector, the conversion is a change in behaviour; in the private sector, the conversion is a buy.

Enabling Content

Enabling content is the  instructive or educational type of copy that helps you complete a process or task. It’s the “how to” – from setting up a piece of equipment to registering for an account, to paying your taxes to ordering a passport. It’s also the text within the software application that tells you about the menu item you choose, and the knowledge base files that demonstrate how something works.

Within this genre, we have many  sub-genres. The most recognizable genre is the procedure. This has a well-defined schema: heading, a contextual introduction, numbered steps, and a conclusion that explains the success state. Each numbered step begins with an active verb, uses the given-new contract technique, and when appropriate, is followed by a feedback statement to demonstrate the expected result. It’s all about the outcome.

The things that writers intuitively understand and build into their copy comes a combination of training, experience, and skill. The difference between amateur writers and trained professionals is apparent because the training is what brings the strong understanding of their craft. But that craft is creating messages. My argument is that this is copy because it pays attention to the message.

 Next post: Turning copy into content

Perhaps it sounds like the editorial side is not as important, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the combination of the editorial and technical sides that makes content work. In my current work, we coined the acronym RAITES as a way of remembering the qualities that content should have to be considered web-worthy:

• Relevant.  To the point. No blah blah about best in market, world-class, robust. Tell the readers what they want to know, right away.
• Accurate. Be right, of course. Also Be sure that this particular piece of information is what the user expects to see in this particular place.
• Informative. Tell readers as much as they need to know to fulfill their need. Not too much, but not too little, either.
• Timely. Publish the content at the appropriate time; that means giving readers enough time to act on it. Then put the content on a review timetable to be checked periodically.
• Engaging. Make readers care. Give readers a call to action. Avoid boring.
• Standards-based. The content has to be structured and shaped in a way that it is able to integrate, converge, syndicate, meet accessibility standards, and be mobile-optimized.

Tall order? Not really. What separates professional writers from the “doing this off the side of my desk” staff who happen to write as part of their “real” work is the ability to create content that RAITES.

The reason I say it’s worth considering is that if you’re like majority of the practitioners I meet, you have an area of expertise within content strategy or marketing communications or technical authoring or the other 31 subsets of the publishing field, and may have some ancillary knowledge about a few of the related areas. But every so often, you need to break out of your comfort zone and go learn something else, something new, something deeper. Congility is one of those conferences where you can do that.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to intimate that you need extensive knowledge of XML to get any value from the presentations. What I’m saying is that if you want to broaden your knowledge and increase your market worth, then this is the perfect place to do that. Even as we’re defining the field of content strategy, it’s changing. We’re looking at integrated content systems, with all of the permutations and combinations of marketing, social, technical, and product information that you can imagine. Just as we decry the project that leaves content in the hands of the technologists, we are moving into the phase where we should decry the content strategist who leaves content technologies in the sole hands of technologists. We might not have to know it in any deep way, but we should know enough not to be steamrollered by those who have technology agendas that don’t benefit our content strategies. There’s something for practitioners of all levels, so you’re bound to find a presentation or workshop that suits you.

Congility is just a few weeks off, so check it out today. I’ll save you a seat in my workshop.
Registration

If you’re being asked to use your content in more than one way, you might be at the stage where the more part includes methods or technologies you’re not really familiar with. Maybe content re-use means syndication or collaborative creation with other departments or divisions, or incorporating content from other sites or user generated content. It could mean figuring how to build community or provide better support or get better feedback.

Maybe more means creating or incorporating help from the technical side, sharing the content in a knowledge base, putting it on the Web, maybe with automatic updates, and adopting XML, perhaps figuring out how the new DITA standard works for you in all of this.

No matter what your situation, you’re in the position where you’re supposed to figure out the XML stuff and the Web stuff and the quality stuff and the stuff around RSS feeds and copyright, how it all fits together, and why you need any of it, anyhow.

After all, if you’ve even tried to coordinate content creation between departments, or track the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns, or just share content between a CMS and LMS, you’ll recognize how hard it is to find two systems that play nice together, let alone get an entire corporate strategy in place. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. The promise of content management was to solve the silo problem, but in many cases has simply created larger silos.

I’ve posted slides from my workshop, where we look at:

• The concepts of content convergence and integration, the principles behind it, and the market forces that are driving the trend
• Opportunities created by content convergence in various contexts, from technical documentation converging to support documentation to marketing material to user-generated content
• The changing nature of content to allow for successful convergence, and the changes in processes to support it
• Ways to prepare your organization to adapt, and explore ways to allow content convergence to drive improvements in business efficiency and customer relationships

Using the music industry as an example of an industry that gets the most from its content, this presentation illustrates ways to make your content be both useful and a delight to your customers.

Creating translation-ready content is useful, whether the translation happens or not, because there are sure to be plenty of ESL readers who will need to decipher the English version. Localized content draws on guidelines from the Plain Language movement, from Controlled Language (or Controlled English or Controlled Technical English), and from the field of translation. There are visual elements to consider, as well as design elements. No matter how small the localization or internationalization initiative, there are sure to be unexpected considerations. Here are some resources that make that point:

You Talking to Me?: Usability for Global Audiences on a Shoestring Budget

Reaching Global Audiences: Doing More with Less

Following the Road Untraveled: From Source Language to Translation to Localization

Yours Truly International

High-Quality Content that Communicates Across Language Barriers

Case studies in Controlled Authoring